הרב עקביא בן מהללאל

Akavya ben Mahalalel was a tanna of the early generations, of whose early life little is known and few of whose teachings are preserved. The Mishnah portrays him as a man who held firm to his opinions in several halachot even against the majority of his colleagues, because they rested on traditions he had received from those before him. On four matters he stood apart from the sages — among them his ruling that the sotah waters are not given to a convert or a freed maidservant, where the majority held that they are.

When the sages pressed him to retract, they went so far as to offer to make him Av Beit Din if he would yield; he refused, saying he would rather be called a fool all his days than be a sinner for a single hour before the Omnipresent. In support of their view they cited the case of Karkemit, a freed maidservant in Yerushalayim to whom Shemaya and Avtalyon had administered the waters; Akavya answered with a slighting remark about the two, and for this a decree of niddui was passed upon him, which he bore to the end of his life.

On his deathbed he charged his son to submit to the words of the majority, even in the four matters where he himself had held firm. When his son asked why he had not done the same, he answered that he had received his tradition from the many and his opponents theirs from the many, and each was bound to stand by what he had heard — but his son had heard from both the individual and the many, and so ought to follow the many. When the son asked his father to commend him to the sages, he declined, saying that his own deeds would bring him near and his own deeds would drive him off.

His teaching in Pirkei Avot is set in the order of the Jewish burial service: reflect on three things and you will not come to sin — know from where you came, a putrid drop; to where you go, a place of dust and worms; and before Whom you are to give account, the King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He.